Short demand
by halfbloodpuffskin
Summary: Based so very loosely on a dragon myth I read when I was little, Luna Lovegood gets kidnapped, has to babysit and gets the eyedrops of doom. This story is set in preHogwarts times and the summer after Harry's 5th year.


Disclaimer: The day I become JK Rowling is the day I send you all a jewel-encrusted water bottle. Until that day comes, assume that I am not JK Rowling, m'kay?

From me to you:_ Okay, this is my first chapter of my first fic... I tell you this not to ask for mercy, but to ask for reviews so I can know exactly which fingers to cut off for crimes against literature. This will get a lot more exciting and funny, but all good humor characters need to combat some sadness, and Luna's story just must start from here...  
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**Chapter 1: Prologue**

_A puff of yellow smoke was the only warning they had. The young girl had been sitting on the desk behind her mother, carefully holding up the book that her mother had been reading from before turning around to repeat the altered spell. The words themselves were the same, but the motions her mother made with her wand were so elaborate and elegant that the young girl watched in awed fascination._

_Watching for changes in the goblet of water, the woman did not notice the wisp of saffron-colored smoke issue from the wand. Gazing at the wand in admiration, the young girl opened her mouth to ask about the pretty smoke when it suddenly gushed out, pooling around the woman's feet and rising swiftly. Eyes wide with terror, the young girl screamed to her mother, whose eyes, looking down, widened in horror as the smoke clung to her robes._

_Again, the young girl screamed as the smoke that was fast covering her mother started to spread to cover the ground between the witch and her daughter. Reaching out her free hand, the woman made as if to push her daughter away from the danger. The desk flew backwards, throwing the girl through the open door and into the hallway._

_From the floor, nursing a hurt wrist and unable to stand from the shock, the girl watched the last few moments as the smoke climbed her mother's neck, then swiftly her face, until only her eyes were visible. The smoke which had covered the witch now rushed into those eyes, obscuring their lights until, when all smoke had disappeared, they flickered out dully._

_The crumpling of her mother's body was the last thing she would see for many days, whether dreaming or awake.  
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Over the course of the few weeks after the death of Melissa Lovegood, Luna was conspicuous in her constant absence. The once happy breakfast hour saw Mr. Lovegood sitting alone at the table, looking over the newest draft of The Quibber while he let his coffee grow cold. The Quibbler, a sort of side enterprise he had taken up after graduation, became the focus of something resembling an obsessions with him. Often taking the tea tray out to her study, he would work until the next morning, at which time a house elf would take away the tray untouched.

His sister, Lynnette Lovegood, was another reason he spent more time in his study than outside. She had come to stay with her brother after the funeral to keep the house-elves in line and bully the Lovegoods into eating when they didn't want to. Most people were a little afraid of her temperament and tendency to scold, which lead to a rather intense unpopularity in younger children. (Incidentally, a neighboring wizard's daughter named Ginny Weasley would, upon meeting this redoubtable woman years later, say that she must have had a disappointment in her youth to make her this cross, right before she announced her wish that the old hag would get vanishing sickness.)

So between the overwrought and distracted Mr. Lovegood and the overbearing and domineering Aunt Lynne, Luna was hard-pressed to put up with the atmosphere hanging around her house for more than twenty minutes a day. Taking a copy of her father's magazine out into the fields, she would read the articles and, if the creature was rumored to have been spotted in Devon, hunt it the better part of the week before writing a "rare and crafty" next to the corresponding article.

In previous years, Luna had not only helped her mother, but had also helped organize the reports sent in for the Quibbler. She enjoyed the work, especially when her father read his findings out to her in his loud voice, punctuating certain sentences with jabs of his quill. Her father had always liked to show her drawings of these uncommon creatures, taking delight in devising a new plan of capture with her.

This all, of course, had stopped when her mother died. Her father distanced as he was, Luna could only go out each day and try to find one of these animals, hoping to spark some sort of interest in her remaining parent.

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Me again:_ See? That wasn't so bad, right? Next chapter: a dragon in need finds good help...or at least, kidnaps some._


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